The Glass Door

This is not about the ubiquitous 'glass ceiling', so you can breathe a sigh of relief -- I've got a feminism diatribe bubbling up inside me that I'll save for another post. This is about information management again, sort of.

Years ago I saw a demo of an in-production collaboration tool much like SharePoint. One of the things that struck me was how each 'site' had two views -- one was public facing and the other view was for those who belonged to the group. They called it a glass-door. You can see what's posted on our door and even look through the glass to see what we are up to, but we're not exposing you to all of the crap WIP material. Sure, you had to write special content for it, but you didn't have to maintain two separate sites. Brilliant.

When I look at our own Intranet site I'm disgusted. We're the flippin' IT group people! There is no information on who we are, what services we provide and how to use them, how to get in touch with us, what training is available, what projects we're working on, what their status is, what systems we support, what our technical environment is, what our priorities or strategic direction is .... I'm starting to get really pissed off as I type this. Bloody hell! DOESN'T ANYBODY THINK IT'S IMPORTANT TO MARKET YOURSELF? I don't understand what the problem is. Technical people can't write? We're stiffled by perfectionism? We really don't know what we do and it changes all the time so we can't put it in writing? Wait -- maybe if we say it out loud, we might have to be accountable for it! JESUS!

I want to sit down and do this myself. Of course it's likely to be received with complete disdain because a) it is not my job b) nobody thinks it's worth doing. I don't want to work for an organization that can't sell itself. "Who are you, what do you do, and (most importantly) what can you do for me?" Everyone should be able to answer those questions in 100 words or less dia- bon!

Why should I click on you?

I've been thinking a lot about the sheer volume of information out there and how it's becoming increasingly important to know something about the information you've found before you make the investment to actually read it.

We're all strapped for time and unless someone I trust tells me that I 'have to' read something, upfront, I want to know:

what it's about
why you think I need to read this
how long it is
what I will learn from it
if it's from a reliable source
how recent it is
where I can find more info on it

Back in the days of paper, your Librarian or Records Manager would help answer these questions. Today, it's not so easy. Thankfully websites provide some context with linking. But in my opinion, auto-tagging and summarizing with technology can only go so far. It has to come from the author. Really, people need to learn how to market their content. I want to start now by writing neat little abstracts that let the reader know why (or why not) they should give up 10 mins of their day to read my stuff. It doesn't have to be long -- just needs to answer the question "Here's why I wrote this in the first place". It's also a great way to bring meaning to my work -- D's own legacy.

How make this idea go viral...

I don't care

Sometimes I look in the mirror and don't recognize the person I've become. It's not a bad thing; it's just that the things I used to care so much about no longer matter to me. I'm not talking about my attitude towards my loved ones or my health -- those are still priority #1. It's about little things like decorating. I used to spend endless hours combing through designer mags and watching HGTV looking for inspiring ideas to make my house a home. Today, I COULDN'T CARE LESS. It is a complete waste of time and money. The house looks fine as it is -- bare.

I have become my mother, *sigh*. I remember being really pissed with my mom for having the same furniture as when she and my dad got married, for refusing to make holes in the wall by hanging art and for leaving the house boring beige. I couldn't understand why she didn't care! Well now I do. It's a rat race. Once you start, you can't stop. You end up with rooms full of furniture that you trip over on a daily basis and shelves full of chotsky's that you have to dust or repair all the time. It also fails to satisfy. The temporary high from a room nicely decorated loses it's appeal within days (yes, it's always about the Power of Now). In fact, if you're like me, it'll even start to piss you off -- why the fuck did I paint this room ORANGE?! It's too BRIGHT dammit! We could have taken a real vacation for what I just spent on new linens, frig! KIDS! STOP CLIMBING ON THAT EXPENSIVE TABLE!! etc, etc.

We all know know people who live for decorating -- they invest hundreds of hours painting elaborate faux finishes, scour antique markets for treasured nick knacks, and sew their own decorative throw pillows and draperies. It's quite impressive and at the same time heart breaking. I just want to shout "None of those things make a happy home lady!" That used to be me. If I could only get back all those hours I spent shopping at Home Sense and planning my designer projects in exchange for quality time spent playing with my kids or even exercising. Those are what matter to me now.

So where is this coming from? Have I matured, or just given up on life? My family thinks I'm depressed and perhaps they are partly right. But maybe I'm just finally learning how to be me. Endless conversations with my Mommy friends about renovations and decorating projects made me feel like I needed to follow the trend. Now I'm just more comfortable with the status quo. I mean, I haven't given up completely -- I still take pride in a neat and clean house. It's just that the decorating (along with the gourmet cooking) is no longer important. And that's OK.

Steppin' in his shoes

My partner is the dishwasher in our family and I never fully appreciated how many flippin' dishes we dirty until I had to be the dishwasher for two months (he's been doing it 80% of the time for 8 years). In fact, I'm ashamed to say that every time I came downstairs in the morning and saw that the gunk from the night before had not been cleaned out, I would curse his name and give him zero credit for doing the dishes. Rather than say anything, I'd just clean out the gunk (which is right up there with cleaning the toilets and mopping up my kid's barf, as far as disgusting chores go) and choose to be pissed off. I called this 'biting my tongue'. But really, I was just holding a grudge.

So now that I am temporarily the dishwasher, I noticed the other day that I too leave gunk in the sink all night long! It's so easy to forget to clean it out after you've spent an hour in the 'effin kitchen 'tidying up'. And because it was me that left the gunk there in the first place, it no longer bothers me. Amazing how stepping into my partner's shoes was the only way I could learn to stop being a bitch about this and to appreciate what he does around here. I'm very grateful for that. Let's hope there are more learning opportunities in store.

Hard Work

Having recently read the book Outliers which challenges the way we look at success (hard work and opportunity vs talent and luck), I was really struck by the effect of hard work. Apparently 10 000 is the magic number of hours you need to put in before you can be considered an expert. Most people fall way short of practicing anything -- an instrument, sport, computing even. It's got me thinking again about how I view my kid's free time. Right now they are still young -- I want them to play as much as they can and to enjoy the freedom of having zero responsibility. Family time is about doing fun things together, not schlepping them to endless scheduled activities. I want them to be generalists and be exposed to a variety of interests so that they can eventually find their 'thing'. But am I doing them a disservice by not helping them develop their talents sooner?

The book also examined the principals of hard work and discipline. It suggested that countries (typically Asian) that have a longer school year, produce smarter children. I've thought a lot about supplementing my child's learning with my own 'Mommy school' (I did teach my son to read after all) on weekends and during evenings. But then the whining starts and I feel guilty for intruding on their playtime. Plus I trust that our school is making the best use of time with my kids. And then I think about what a waste my own elementary school days were...

I'm beginning to think that this 'Kumon Method' of learning by wrote (for math especially) is the way to go. Math is just one of those things that you've got to practice over and over again in order to build confidence. You hear about it in Asian countries -- kids reciting their times tables and doing pages and pages of the same kinds of problems until it's embedded. My kids are going to hate me for this, but I can't get it out of my head. I don't want them to have the same fear of basic math that I have (you know the sudden urge to leave the room when the cheque arrives and you have to calculate the tip ... can't wait to start using the 'I forgot my glasses' excuse for that one).

At any rate, it's given me a lot to think about -- the value of hard work. Yeah, it's right up there with teaching my kids love and respect. I need to do something about this.

Information Management is Dead

I'm starting to read more and more about the death of my profession as an IM Specialist and rather than refute it or bury my head in the sand, I couldn't agree more.

I often get stuck on explaining just what IM is.  So I revert to a tired slogan for lack of anything else more concise -- 'it's about being able to make sure that the right information is available at the right time in the right format and at the right cost'. In the old days of paper, you relied on Records Managers to describe, organize, search and retrieve your records. But once digitial information arrived, the RM became obsolete. End users managed their own files at their desktop and the rigor of classifying and culling information was thrown by the way side, which is why shared drives are basically dumping grounds of poorly described, duplicate, and obsolete information. Enter the IM Specialist -- someone with the same organizational and analytical skills as the Records Manager, but who is comfortable with technology and can advise on how to navigate your digital nightmare using best practices (which are so pathetically obvious, it's hard to believe that someone actually pays me to do this). You don't know what to name your file? -- How about just calling it what it is? You don't know what information to delete in your email? Try most of what's in your inbox for starters.

One of the big responsibilities of the IM Specialist is to develop a 'Retention Schedule' which is supposed to be a mission critical document that says -- "this is what we keep information on and this is how long we keep it for". So if the company gets sued and can't come up with the documents or emails, they simply point to their approved Retention Schedule and say "too bad so sad, the information was deleted and this here Retention Schedule covers our asses". I won't bore you with how we come up with this magical schedule. In fact all I've done in my six years in this field is talk about it. We have yet to actually DO IT.

Corporate risk doesn't really resonate with end users, so I usually sell it with Search. If you keep everything, including the crap, it'll be harder to find the good shit, right? (of course I attenuate at work, just not in my blog). This is usually sellable because we all know how shitty desktop searching is -- if I search for 'information management', I'll get everything with the words 'information', 'management' or even fucking 'ment' in it. But thanks to advances in technology, namely Google, why delete anything? There is no master Retention Schedule for the Internet, baby! If you have a kick-ass search tool, the good stuff will float to the top and the crap info will remain out of sight. The only time we need to actually delete anything is if there's legislation that stipulates that you have to get rid of something after a specific time period. And really, there's NOT a lot of these out there.

So here I am once again working on 'the Retention Schedule', only I don't believe in it anymore. It's a bloody waste of time to go around asking people what information has value to them. If someone asked you this, wouldn't you think "everything I write has value, you dolt!". And then I have to ask: "How long do you need to keep it for" ... To which they reply: "Why not forever, isn't storage cheap? I can pick up a 1 TB removable drive for $40 at Staples, so don't tell me it's costly for you to store my files. Go tinker with some server in a closet and stop wasting my time, you idiot. Jeesh. How much do they pay those CSes, again?"

So between this and my rant about the uselessness of organizing and classifying information, my profession is already dead. Time for a career change. What though?

Sorry doesn't cut it

*Sigh* I'm tired of apologizing. He's tired of hearing it. Sorry means you're going to change. Thankfully our partners give us many chances. But does that just give us a license to screw up? I know that I'll be forgiven so what motivation is there to really try? Well, even when my apologies are accepted, damage has still been done. A new tiny brick in the wall of resentment has been laid. Enough tiny bricks and ....

I remember when I was single, I tried a lot harder to get along with my boyfriends -- probably out of fear that they would leave me (yes, that is pathetic, but we were all stupid in our 20s). That's the thing about marriage, especially when you have such a loyal and devoted partner. He's not going anywhere, so technically I can treat him like dirt, if I want to. It's no wonder married folks are typically miserable.

Do I need to go back to dating my partner in order for us to regain the respect for each other that once was? I am rarely at the receiving end of an apology (that says a lot, yikes). Luckily, the magic of "I'm sorry" still melts the resentment and wipes his slate clean. In fact that is true of most of my good friends and family. So I guess I'll keep churning out the apologies until one day my partner says "save it, I've heard it before, how is this time different?". Whoa ... just typing that makes me shudder.